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SELECTIONS 



FROM THE WRITINGS OP 



George MacDonald 



HELPS FOR WEARY SOULS 



Compiled by J. DEWEY 




NEW YORK 

THOMAS R. KNOX & CO. 

Successors to James Miller 

813 Broadway 






Thb Library 
op Congress 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1885, by 
THOMAS R. KNOX & CO. 



Ui 



TROWS 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 
NEW YORK. 



HELPS FOR 
"WE^PtY SOULS. 



I seek to know God, to hear his voice 
Talk to my heart in silence : as of old 
The Hebrew king, when, still upon his bed, 
He lay communing with his heart ; and 

God 
With strength in his soul, did strengthen 

him, until 
In his light he saw light. God speaks to 

men. 
My soul leans towards him ; stretches forth 

its arms, « 

And waits expectant. Speak to me, my 

God ; 
And let me know the living Father-care, 



4 HELPS FOE 

For me, even me ; for this one of thy chil- 
dren. 

Hast thou no word for me? I am thy 

thought ; 
God, let thy mighty heart beat into mine, 
And let mine answer, as a pulse, to thine. 
See, 1 am low, yea, very low, — but thou 
Art high, and thou canst lift me up to thee. 
I am a child before thee, God ! 
But thou hast made my weakness as my 

strength ; 
I am an emptiness for thee to fill, 
My soul a cavern to thy sea; I lie 
Diffused, abandoning myself to thee, . . . 
— I will look up, if life should fail in look- 
ing. • 

What man can judge his neighbor right 
save him whose love makes him refuse to 
judge him ? Therefore are we told to love, 
not judge. . . . The love that is more 



WEARY SOULS. 5 

than law lives in the endless story, — com- 
ing out in active kindness, that is, the recog- 
nition of kin, of kind, of nighness, of neigh- 
borhood ; yea, in tenderness and loving 
kindness. 



The whole constitution of human society 
exists for the express end of teaching the 
two truths by which man lives : Love to 
God and love to man. . . . My brother 
according to the flesh is my first neighbor, 
that we may be very nigh to each other, 
whether we will or no, while our hearts are 
tender and so may learn brotherhoods. 
For our love to each other is but the throb- 
bing of the heart of the great brotherhood, 
and could come only from the eternal Fa- 
ther, not from our parents. . . . Then 
my second neighbor appears, and who is 
he ? not the man only with whom I dine ; 
not the friend only with whom I share my 



6 HELPS FOR 

thoughts ; not the man only whom my com- 
passion would lift from some slough ; but 
the man who makes my clothes ; the man 
who prints my book; the man who drives 
me in his cab ; the man who begs from me 
in the street ; yea, even to the man who 
condescends to me. With all and each, 
there is a chance of doing the part of a 
neighbor — by speaking truly, acting justly, 
and thinking kindly. Even these deeds 
will help to that love which is born of 
righteousness. __ 

It is a grand thing to obey without ask- 
ing questions, so long as there is nothing 
evil in what is commanded. 



Of all forces, that of growth is the one 
irresistible, for it is the creating power of 
God, the law of life and being. 



WEAEY SOULS. 7 

Whatever it be that keeps the finer facul- 
ties of the mind awake, wonder alive, and 
the interest above mere eating and drink- 
ing, money- making and money- saving ; 
whatever it be that gives gladness or sor- 
row, or hope, — is simply a divine gift of 
holy influence for the salvation of that be- 
ing to whom it comes, for the lifting of him 
out of the mire and up on the rock. 



There is no better discipline than an oc- 
casional descent from what we count well- 
being to a former despised or less happy 
condition. 

All good is of God. ... If a man 
love his brother, whom he hath seen, the 
love of God, whom he hath not seen, is not 
very far off. . . . God be praised by 
those who know religion to be the truth of 
humanity, — its own truth that sets it free 
— not binds and lops and mutilates it ! 



8 HELPS FOR 

The spirit of God lies all about the spirit 
of men, like a mighty sea, ready to rush in 
at the smallest chink in the walls that shut 
him from his own. 



Every highest human act is just a giving 
back to God of that which he first gave to 
us.- " Thou, God, hast given me; here again 
is thy gift ; I send my spirit home." Every 
act of worship is a holding up to God of 
what God hath made us. " Here, Lord, 
look what I have got : feel with me in what 
thou hast made me, in this thy own bounty, 
my being. I am thy child, and know not 
how to thank thee save by uplifting the 
heaven-offering of the overflowing of thy life 
and calling aloud ' It is thine : it is mine, 
I am thine, and therefore I am mine.' " 
The vast operations of the spiritual as of 
the physical world are simply a turning 
ao;ain to the source. 



WEARY SOULS. 9 

The last act of our Lord in commending 
his spirit to his Father, at the close of his 
life, was only a summing up of what he 
had been doing all his life. . . . Every 
morning when he went out ere it was day, 
every evening when he lingered on the 
night lapt mountain, after his friends were 
gone, he was offering himself to his Fa- 
ther, in the communion of loving words, of 
high thoughts, of speechless feelings ; and, 
between, he turned to do the same thing in 
deed, namely — in loving word, in helping- 
thought, in healing action, towards his 
fellows ; for the way to worship God, while 
the daylight lasts, is to work ; the service of 
God, the only " divine service," is the help- 
ing of our fellows ; I want to show, that this 
is the simplest, blessedest thing in the hu- 
man world. 



To know one's self safe amid storms and 



10 HELPS FOR 

darkness and fire and water, amid disease 
and pain, even during the felt approach of 
death, is to be a Christian. 



I am far from sure that the best prepara- 
tion for a disappointment is not the hope 
that precedes it. Let us hold by our hopes. 
. . . By our hopes, we are saved. 



Let us make the best we can of this life, 
that we may become able to make the best 
of the next also. 



To walk with God is to go hand in hand 
with him, like a boy with his Father. 



To love a thing divinely is to be ready to 
yield it without a pang, when God wills it. 



O God ! we belong to thee utterly ; we 
dying men are thy children, O living Fa- 
ther. Thou art such a Father that thou 



WEARY SOULS. 11 

takest our sins from us and thro west them 
behind thy back. Thou cleansest our souls 
as thy Son did wash our feet. We hold our 
hearts up to thee, make them what they 
must be, O Love ! O Life of men ! O heart 
of hearts ! 



If a man's earnest calling (that to which 
of necessity the greater part of his thought 
is given) is altogether dissociated in his 
mind from his religion, it is not wonderful 
that his prayers should, by degrees, wither 
and die. 



I think that Death has two sides to it — 
One sunny, and one dark ; as this round earth 
Is every day half sunny and half dark, 
We on the dark side call the mystery, 

Death ; 
They on the other, looking down in light, 
Wait the glad Birth, with other tears than 

ours. 



12 HELPS FOR 

When tlie will of the man sides perfectly 
with the holy impulses in him, then all is 
well : for then his mind is one with the 
mind of his Maker ; God and man are one. 



It has been well said, that no man ever 
sank under the burden of the day. It is 
when to-morrow's burden is added to the 
burden of to-day, that the weight is more 
than one. can bear. . . . God begs you 
to leave the future to him, and mind the 
present. 



Revenge is of death and deadly. For- 
giveness has taken its place, and forgive- 
ness is the giving, and so the receiving, of 
life. 



At the root of all human bliss lies repent- 
ance. " Come then, at the call of the Maker, 
the Healer, the giver of repentance and 



WEARY SOULS. 13 

light, the friend of publicans and sinners, — 
all ye on whom lies the weight of sin." 
. . . He came to call such as you, that 
he might make you clear and clean. He 
cannot bear that you should live on in such 
misery, such badness, such blackness of 
darkness. He would give you again your 
life, the bliss of your being. He will not 
give you one word of reproach. . . 
You that know yourselves sinners come to 
him, that he may work in you his perfect 
work, for he came not to call the righteous 
but sinners, — us, you and me — to repent- 
ance. Until the human heart knows the Di- 
vine heart it must sigh and complain like a 
petulant child. . . . When we find him 
in our own hearts, we shall find him in 
everything. It is Life we want. 



An old man, somehow 7 , comes to know 
things like a child. They call it a second 



U HELPS FOR 

childhood. . . . And there are some 
things worth growing a child again, to get 
a hold of them. 



Till a man knows he is one of God's 
family, living in God's house, with God up- 
stairs, as it were, while he is at his work or 
at play, in a nursery below- stairs, he cannot 
feel comfortable. For a man could not be 
made who should stand alone, like some of 
the beasts ; a man must feel a head over 
him, because he is not enough to satisfy 
himself alone ; . . .he w r ants to feel 
that there is a loving Father over him, who 
it doing all things well and right. 



An ejaculation of love is not likely to of- 
fend Him who is so grand that He is always 
meek and lowly of heart, and whose love 
is such that ours is a mere faint light, — a 
little glooming light much like a shade. 



WEARY SOULS. 15 

When one has come to seek the honor 
that comes from God only he will take the 
withholding of the honor that comes from 
men very quietly indeed. 



When God in Jesus comes back to men, 
brothers and sisters spread forth their arms 
to embrace each other, and so to embrace 
him. This is when he is born again in our 
souls. For what we all need is just to be- 
come little children ; to cease to be careful 
about many things, and trust in him, seek- 
ing only that he should rule, and that we 
should be made good like him ; what else is 
meant by " Seek ye first," etc.? Instead of 
doing so we seek the things that God has 
promised to look after for us, and refuse to 
seek after the things he wants us to seek, — 
a thing that cannot be given us unless we 
seek it. 



16 HELPS FOE 

What can a man do but pray ? He is 
here — helpless, and his origin — the breather 
of his soul, his God must be somewhere. 
And what else should he pray about but 
the thing that troubles him ? What is the 
trouble there for, but to make him cry ? It 
is the pull of God at his being. Let a man 
only pray. Prayer is the sound to which 
not merely is the ear of the Father open, 
but for w r hich that ear is listening. Let a 
man pray for that, in whose loss, life is 
growing black ; the heart of the Father is 
open. 



How many people w r ould like to be good, 
if only they might be good without taking 
trouble about it ! They do not like goodness 
w r ell enough to hunger and thirst after it, 
or to sell all that they have, that they may 
buy it. They will not batter at the gate of 
the kingdom of heaven, but they look with 



WEARY SOULS. 17 

pleasure on this or that aerial castle of 
righteousness, and think it would be rather 
nice to live in it. They do not know that 
it is goodness all the time their very being 
is pining after, and that they are starving 
their nature of its necessary food. 



Peace for those who do the truth, not for 
those who opine it. The true man, trou- 
bled by intellectual doubt, is so troubled 
into further health and growth. Let him 
be alive and hopeful, above all, obedient, 
and he will be able to wait for the deeper 
content which must follow with deeper 
insight. 



There is a great power in quiet, for God 
is in it ; not seldom he seems to lay his hand 
on one of his children, as a mother lays hers 
on the restless one in his crib, to still him. 
Then the child sleeps, but the man begins 



18 HELPS FOR 

to live up from the lower depths of his nat- 
ure. . . . When the hand of God is 
laid upon a man, — vain moan, and struggle 
and complaint, — it may be, indignant out- 
cry, follows : but, when, outwearied at last 
he yields, if it be but in dull submission, 
and is still, — then the God at the heart of 
him, the God that is there (or the man 
could not be) — begins to grow. 



When the inward Sun is shining, and the 
wind of thought rouses glad forms and 
feelings, it is easy to say, my God. . . . 
It is easy in pain, so long as it does not pass 
certain bounds, to hope in God for deliver- 
ance, or pray for strength to endure. But 
what is to be done when all feeling is gone ? 
when a man does not know whether he be- 
lieves or not ? whether he loves or not ? — 
so swallowed up is he in pain or mental de- 
pression or temptation ! . . . If he is 



WEARY SOULS, 19 

still humble, he thinks he is so bad that 
God cannot care for him. And he then be- 
lieves, for the time, that God loves us only 
because and when we love him, instead of 
believing that God loves us always, because 
he is our God, and we live only by his love. 



The truth is this : God wants to make us 
in his own image, choosing the good, refus- 
ing the evil. How should he effect this ; if 
he were always moving us from within, as 
he does at divine intervals towards the 
beauty of holiness ? God gives us room to 
he, does not oppress us with his will, — 
" stands away from us," that we may act 
from ourselves, that we may exercise the 
pure will for good. . . . For God made 
our individuality as well as our dependence, 
made our apartness from himself, that free- 
dom should bind us divinely dearer to him- 
self with a new and inscrutable marvel 



20 HELPS FOR 

of love. . . . The freer the man, the 
stronger the bond that binds him to Him 
who made his freedom . . . for only 
in the perfection of our individuality, and 
the freedom of our wills, can we be alto- 
gether his children. 



God has created all our worships, rever- 
ences, tendernesses, loves. They come out 
of his heart, and he made them in us, Jbe- 
cause, they arose in him first. All that 
we can imagine of the wise, the lovely, the 
beautiful, is in him, — only infinitely more 
of them, than we could merely imagine. 



O Lord, what a labor thou hast with us 
all ! Shall we ever, some day, be all and 
quite good like thee ? Help me ! Fill me 
with thy light, that my work may all go to 
bring about the gladness of thy kingdom, — 



WEAEY SOULS. 21 

the holy household of us brothers and sis- 
ters, — all thy children. 



Wherever the water of life is received it 
sinks and softens and hollows, until it 
reaches far down the springs of life, that 
come straight from the eternal hills, — 
and thenceforth, there is in that soul a 
well of water springing up into everlasting 
life. 



Whatever is capable of aspiring must be 
troubled that it may wake and aspire; — - 
then troubled still — that it may hold fast, 
be itself, and aspire still. 



In every honest heart, young or old, fee- 
ble or strong, the new summer day stirs, 
and will stir, while the sun has heat enough 
to live on the earth. Surely the live God 
is not absent from the symbol of his glory ! 



22 HELPS FOR 

The light and the hope are not there, with- 
out him ! 



Love itself is the only true nearness. He 
who thinks of his God as far away, can 
have made little progress in the need of 
him ; and he who does not need much can- 
not know much. 



"When the weakness of age begins to 
show itself — a shadow— background against 
which the strength is known and outlined 
when every movement begins to demand a 
distinct effort of the will, and the earthly 
house presses upon the spirit within, then 
indeed must a man have God, believe in 
him with an ehtireness independent of feel- 
ing, or be devoured by despair. 



In the feebleness of old age one may well 
come to accept life only because it is the 
will of God ; but such weakness is the ma- 



WEARY SOULS. 23 

trix of a divine strength whence a gladness 
unspeakable shall erelong be born ; — the 
life that it is God's intent to share with his 
children. 



If there be one thing a Christian soul re- 
coils from, it is meanness — of action, of 
thought, of judgment. 



It is the assurance that comes of inmost 
beholding of himself, of seeing what he is, 
that God cares to produce in us. 



The only thing worth a man's care is the 
will of God, and that will is the same, 
whether in this world or the next. 



In every commonest day of his life, he 
who would be a live child of the living has 
to fight with the God-denying look of 
things, and believe, that, in spite of that 
look, that seems ever to assert that God has 



24 HELPS FOR 

nothing to do with them, — God has his own 
way, — the best, the only, the live way, of 
being in everything, and taking his own 
pure, saving will in them. 



Goodness, and nothing else, is life and 
health, . . . what the universe demands 
of us is to be good. 



Oh, how delightful to live in a house 
where everybody understood and loved and 
thought about everybody else ! 



There is no escaping the mill that grinds 
slowly and grinds small ! and those who re- 
fuse to be living stones in the living temple, 
must be ground into mortar for it. 



If there be a God he is all in all and fill- 
eth all things, and all is w r ell. 



Blessed be the voice that tells us we must 



WEARY SOULS. 25 

forsake all, and take up our cross and fol- 
low Him, — losing our life that we may find 
it. 



Alas ! how is it with our hearts that in 
trouble they cry, and in joy forget ! that we 
think it hard of God not to hear, and when 
he has answered abundantly, turn away, as 
if we wanted him no more ! 



Despise a man, and you become of the 
kind you would make him ; love him, and 
you lift him into yours. 



How poor and helpless, how mere a pil- 
grim and a stranger in a world, over which 
he has no rule, must he be, who has not God 
at one with him ! not otherwise can his life 
be free, save as moving in loveliest harmony 
with the w T ill and life of the only freedom, 
— that which wills and we are ! 



26 HELPS FOR 

Oneness with the mighty All is the one 
end of life ; distraction, — things going at a 
thousand foolish wills, — at the other. God 
or chaos is the alternative. 



When we cease listening to the cries of 
self, — seeking and self -care, — then the voice 
that was there all the time enters into our 
ears. It is the voice of the Father speak- 
ing to his child • never known for what it 
is until the child begins to obey it. 



My soul often seems as if it had lost all 
the odors that should float up in the sweet- 
smelling savor of thankfulness and love to 
Thee. But Thou hast only to take me, only 
to choose me, only to clasp me to Thy bosom 
and I shall be a beautiful singing angel, — 
singing to God . . . Father, take me, 
possess me, fill me ! 



WEARY SOULS. 27 

Then I saw that the Lord himself was 
clasped in the love of the Father ; that it 
was in the power of mighty communion 
that the daily obedience was done ; that be- 
sides the outward story of his devotion to 
men there was the inward story — of his de- 
votion to his Father — of his speech to him, 
of his upward look, of his delight in giving 
up to him. 



Brothers, sisters! do I not know your 
heart from my own? sick hearts which 
nothing can restore to health and joy but 
the presence of Him who is Father and 
mother, both in one. . . . The heart with- 
in you cries out for something, and you let 
it cry ; it is crying for its God . . . and 
all the world will look dull and gray (if it 
does not look so now) — till your heart is sat- 
isfied and quieted with the known presence 
of Him in whom we live. 



28 HELPS FOR 

A man may be oppressed by bis sins, and 
hardly know what it is that oppresses him. 
There is more of sin in our burdens than we 
are ourselves aware of. It needs not that 
we should have committed any grievous 
fault. Do we recognize in ourselves that 
which needs to be set right, that of w r hich 
we ought to be ashamed ? Something 
which — were we lifted above all worldly 
anxieties, — would yet keep us uneasy, dis- 
satisfied, — take the essential gladness out of 
the sunlight, make the fair face of the earth 
indifferent to us? a trustful glance, a dis- 
composing look, and death, a darkness ? To 
the man w T ho feels this, whatever he may 
have done, or left undone, he is not so far 
from the kingdom of heaven but that he 
may enter thereinto, if he will. 



O blessed, holy, lovely repentance ! to 
which the Son of man, the very root and 



WEARY SOULS. 29 

man of men hath, come to call us ! Come 
and repent with me, oh heart wounded by 
thine own injustice and wrong ; and together 
we will seek the merciful. 



The murderer and the unloving sit on the 
same bench before the Judge of eternal 
truth. . . . Until we love our brother, 
— yes, until we love our enemy, — who is yet 
our brother, — we contain within ourselves 
the undeveloped germ of murder. And so 
with every sin in the tables, or out of the 
tables. 

Oh, to be clean as a mountain river ! clean 
as the air above the clouds, or on the middle 
seas ! as the throbbing ether that fills the 
gulf between star and star ! nay, as the 
thought of the Son of man himself ! 



The clear, pure light of the morning made 
me long for the truth in my heart which 



30 HELPS FOR 

alone could make me pure and clear as the 
morning, — tune me up to the concert pitch 
of the nature around me. And the wind 
that blew from the sunrise made me hope 
in the God who had first breathed into my 
nostrils the breath of life, that he would at 
length so fill me with his breath, his wind, 
his spirit, — that I should think only his 
thought, and live his life, finding therein my 
own life only glorified infinitely. 



There is purity and state in that sky. 
There is a peace now in this wide, still 
earth, — and in that overhanging blue, 
which my heart cries out that it needs, 
and cannot be well till it gains, — gains 
in the truth, gains in God, who is the power 
of truth, the living truth, cries as know- 
ing the vile disease that cleaveth to us ! 
. . . O Father, who art all in all, per- 
fect beyond the longing of thy children, — 



WEARY SOULS, 31 

and we are all and altogether thine. Thou 
wilt make us pure and loving and free. 
We shall stand fearless in thy presence be- 
cause perfect in thy love. . , . Oh let 
the heart of a child be given to us that we 
may arise from the grave of our dead selves 
and die no more, but see face to face the 
God of the living. 



It is his loves, and his hopes, not his 
visions and intentions, by which a man is to 
be judged. 



. The only comfort is God is, and I am his, 
else I should not be at all. ... I saw 
now, that thus God also lives — in his higher 
way. I saw, shadowed out in the absolute 
devotion of Jesus to men, that the very life 
of God by which we live is an everlasting, 
eternal giving of himself away. He asserts 
himself, only, solely, altogether in an infi- 



32 HELPS FOR 

nite sacrifice of devotion. So must we live. 
The child must be as the Father ; live he 
cannot on any other plan, struggle as he 
may The Father requires of him noth- 
ing that he is not, or does not, himself, 
who is the one prime unconditioned sacri- 
ficer and sacrifice ; — I offered back, my poor 
wretched self, to its owner, to be taken and 
kept, purified and made divine. 



There is more to be had out of the or- 
dained opposition of things, than from the 
smoothest going of the world's wheels. 
Whatever makes the children feel that they 
are only out to nurse, and have here no 
abiding city, but a school of righteousness 
and truth and love, is a precious uplifting 
step to the only success. 



God would have us live ; — if we live we 
cannot but know ; while all the knowledge 



WEARY SOULS. 33 

in the universe cannot make us live. Obe- 
dience is the road to all things. It is the 
only way to grow able to trust him. Love 
and faith and obedience are sides of the 
same prism. 



The desire to be known of men is de- 
structive to all true greatness ; nor is there 
any honor worth calling honor but what 
comes from an unseen source. To be great 
is to seem small in the eyes of men. 



The world will change only as the heart 
of man changes. Growing intellect, grow- 
ing civilization will heal men's wounds only 
to cause the deeper ill to break out afresh in 
new forms, nor can they satisfy one longing 
of the human soul. Its desires are deeper 
than that soul itself, whence it groans with 
the groanings that cannot be uttered. As 

much in times of civilization as in those of 
3 



34 HELPS FOR 

barbarity, the soul needs an external pres- 
ence to mate its life good to it. 



Godless man is a horror of the unfinished, 
a hopeless necessity for the unattainable 
. . . money, ease, honor, can help noth- 
ing; the most discontented are of those 
who have all that the truthless heart desires. 



God is more to me than the whole world 
of men and women ! When my Maker 
puts joy in my heart, shall I not be glad? 
When he calls my name shall I not answer ? 
He is at my right hand, I shall not be 
moved. 



I would rather be what God chose to 
make me than the most glorious creature 
that I could think of. For to have been 
thought about — born in God's thoughts — ■ 
and then made by God, is the dearest, 



WEARY SOULS. 35 

grandest, most precious thing in all think- 
ing;. 



For a man to be let alone is for a man 
not to need God, but to be able to live 
without him. Our hearts cry out " To have 
God is to live. We want God. Without 
him no life of ours is worth living." 

We are not then even human, for that is 
but the lower form of the divine. We are 
immortal, eternal ; " Fill us, O Father, with 
thyself. Then only all is well." It is es- 
sential, divine life we want. . . . One 
thing is sure : we are His, and He will do 
His part. 



The well-spring of day, fresh and ex- 
uberant, as if now first from the holy will of 
the Father of lights, gushed into the basin 
of the world, and the world was more glad 
than tongue or pen can tell. The supernal 



36 HELPS FOR 

light alone, dawning upon the human heart 
can exceed the marvel of such a sunrise. . . . 
And shall life itself be less beautiful than 
oneof its days ? Do not believe it ! men 
call the shadow thrown upon the universe 
where their own dusky souls come betw r een 
it and the eternal sun — life ; and then 
mourn that it should be less bright than the 
hopes of their childhood. Keep thou thy 
soul translucent, that thou mayest never see 
its shadows ... or rather, I would say, 
become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt 
see God, w r hose vision alone is life. 



The only w T ay to be absolutely certain of 
God, is to see him as he is, and for that w r e 
must first become absolutely pure in heart. 
For this he is working in us, and perfection 
and vision will flash together. 



It is one thing to be so used to certain 



WEARY SOULS. 37 

statements and modes of thought, that you 
take all for true, and quite another so to 
believe the heart of it all, that you are in 
essential and imperturbable peace and glad- 
ness, because of it. 



Love is the first comforter, and where 
love and truth speak, the love will be felt 
where the truth is never perceived. Love 
is indeed the highest in all truth ; and the 
pressure of a hand, a kiss, the caress of a 
child, will do more to save sometimes, than 
the wisest argument even rightly understood. 
Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power ; 
and where love seems to fail, it is where self 
has stepped between and dulled the potency 
of its rays. 



Truth is a very different thing from fact ; 
it is the loving contact of the soul with spir- 
itual fact, vital and potent. It does its 



38 HELPS FOR 

work in the soul, independently of all fac- 
ulty or qualification therefor, setting it 
forth or defending it. Truth in the inward 
parts is a power, not an opinion. 



If God be so near as the very idea of 
him necessitates, what other availing proof 
can there be, of his existence, than such 
awareness, as must come of the developing 
relation between him and us ? 



People talk about special providences. I 
believe in the providences, but not in the 
specialty. God does not let the thread of 
my affairs go for six days, and on the sev- 
enth take it up for a moment. The so-called 
special providences are no exception to the 
rule. . . . It is a fact that God's care 
is- more evident in some instances of it, than 
in others ; — upon which men seize, and call 
them providences. It is well that they can, 



WEARY SOULS, 39 

but it would be gloriously better if they 
could believe that the whole matter is one 
grand providence. 



Ah ! if any man's work is not with God, 
its results shall be burned, ruthlessly burned, 
because poor and bad. 



Xot one human being ought— even were 
it possible — to be enough for himself ; each 
of us needs God, and every human soul he 
has made needs him, before he has enough : 
but we ought each to be able, in the hope 
of what is one day to come, to endure for a 
time, not having enough. 



I shall mind nothing so long as I can 
trust in the Father of me. If my faith in 
him should give way, then there would be 
nothing worth minding either. 



40 HELPS FOR 

God alone can tell what delights it is pos- 
sible for him to give to the pure in heart, 
who shall one day behold him. 



Those with whom the feeling of religion 
is only occasional have it most when the 
awful or grand breaks out of the common ; 
the meek who inherit the earth find the God 
of the whole world more evidently present, 
and in the commonest things. That which 
is best he gives most plentifully. Hence 
the great fulness of ordinary nature. 



What a joy to know, that of all things, 
and all thoughts, God is nearest to us ! So 
near, that we cannot see Him ; — but far be- 
yond seeing him, we can know him infi- 
nitely. 

Ah, what it would be actually to annihi- 
late wrong ! to be able to say it shall not be 



WEARY SOULS. 41 

wrong against me, so utterly do I forgive it! 
How much sooner, then, would the wrong- 
doer repent and get rid of the wrong on his 
side, also ! But the painful fact will show 
itself, not less curious than painful, that it 
is more difficult to forgive small wrongs 
than great ones. ... It is dreadful to 
have bad ways inside one. 



No man sinks into the grave, he only dis- 
appears. Life is a constant sunrise, which 
death cannot interrupt any more than the 
night can swallow up the sun. 



Our minds are small because they are 
faithless. If we had faith in God our hearts 
would share in his greatness and peace. 
We should not then be shut up in ourselves, 
but would walk abroad in him. 



42 HELPS FOR 

In all God's works, the laws of beauty are 
wrought out, in evanishment, — in birth and 
death. There, there is no hoarding, but an 
ever fresh creating, an eternal flow of life 
from the heart of the all-beautiful. Hence, 
even the heart of man cannot hoard. . . . 
If man would have, it is the Giver he must 
have ; the Eternal, the Original, the Ever- 
outpouring is alone within his reach. 



Certainly, it is a nobler thing to seek God 
in the days of gladness ; to look up to him 
in trustful bliss when the sun is shining ; 
but if a man be miserable, if the storm is 
coming down upon him, what is he to do ? 
There is nothing mean in seeking God then, 
though it would have been nobler to seek 
him before. 

No man can do anything perfectly right 
until he is one with Him whose is the only 



WEARY SOULS. 43 

absolute self -gen era ted purity ; that is, un- 
til God dwells in him, and he in God. 



All sorts of means are kept at work to 
make the children obedient, simple, and 
noble : Joy and Sorrow are servants in 
God's nursery : Pain and Delight, Ecstasy 
and Despair minister in it. 



Lord, come -to me, for I cannot go to thee. 
. . . The tenderness of thine infinitude 
looks upon me from those heavens. Thou 
art in them and in me. Because thou think- 
est, I think ; I am thine — all thine. I 
abandon myself to thee. Fill me with thy- 
self, When I am full of thee, my griefs 
themselves will grow golden in thy sunlight 
Thou holdest them and their cause, and wilt 
find some nobler atonement between them 
than vile forgetfulness or the death of love. 
Lord, let me help those that are wretched, 



44 HELPS FOR 

because they do not know thee. Let me 
tell them that thou, the Life, must need 
suffer for and with them that they may be 
made partakers of thine ineffable peace. 



My life is hid in Thine, take me in Thine 
hand ; as Gideon bore the pitcher to the 
battle, let me be broken, if need be, that 
Thy light may shine. 



Till a man has learned to be happy with- 
out the sunshine, and therein becomes capa- 
ble of enjoying it perfectly, it is well that 
the shine and the shadow should be min- 
gled, so as God only knows how to mingle 
them. To effect the blessedness for which 
God made him, man must become a fellow- 
worker with God. 

There are many lives ruined because they 
have not had tenderness enough. 






WEARY SOULS. 45 

Until we begin to learn that the only way 
to serve God, in any real sense of the word, 
is to serve our neighbor, we may have 
knocked at the wicket gate, but I doubt if 
we have got one foot across the threshold of 
the kingdom. 

Obedience alone holds wide the door f o r 
the entrance of the spirit of wisdom. . . . 
Love makes obedience a joy; of him who 
obeys, all heaven is the patrimony ; he is 
fellow-heir with Christ. 



No man can order his life, for it comes 
flowing over him from behind. . . . 
The one secret of life and development is 
not to devise and plan, but to fall in with 
the forces at work ; to do every moment's 
duty aright — that being the part in the proc- 
ess allotted to us; and let come, not what 
will — for there is no such thing — but what 



46 HELPS FOR 

the Eternal Thought wills for us, has in- 
tended for each of us, from the first. If 
men would but believe that they are in 
process of creation, and consent to be made, 
they would erelong find themselves able to 
welcome every pressure of the hand upon 
them, even where it was felt in pain, and 
so recognize the divine end in view — the 
bringing of a son into glory. 



All love is a worship of the Infinite ; 
what is called a man's love for himself is 
not love, it is but a phantastic resemblance of 
love. If all love be not a creation, as I think 
it is — it is at least the only thing in harmony 
with creation ; and the love of one's self, is 
its absolute opposite. . . . I sickened 
at the sight of myself. , . . The same 
instant, I saw the one escape, I must offer it 
back to its source — commit it to Him who 
made it. I must live no more from it, but 



WEARY SOULS. 47 

from the source of it. Thus might I be- 
come one with the Eternal ; thus might I 
draw life, ever fresh from its fountain. 



Wonderful, surely will this world appear^ 
and strangely more, when, become children 
again by being gathered to our fathers — joy- 
ous day ! — w T e turn and gaze back upon it 
from the other side ! I imagine that to him 
who has overcome it, the world, in very 
virtue of his victory, will show itself the 
lovely and pure thing it was created : for 
he will see through the cloudy envelope of 
his battle to the living; kernel below. 



Every day is mouldering away this body 
of mine, till it shall fall into its appointed 
place ; but what is that to me ? It is to 
me the drawing nigh of the fresh morning 
of life, w T hen I shall be young and strong 
again ! glad in the presence of the wise and 



HELPS FOR 



beloved dead, and unspeakably glad in the 
presence of my God, which I have now, 
but hope to possess far more hereafter. 



The light of the sun being the natural 
world-clothing of the truth, the mind that 
sits much in the physical dark is in danger 
of missing a great help to understanding the 
things of the light. 



Ourselves our centre, instead of God, is 
the source of all wrong and all misery. « It 
is terrible to think of being one moment 
without Him ; never deserted child could be 
other than a poor picture of that. Even in 
our commonest every-day work we need the 
consciousness of his constant presence. . . . 
To be conscious of this great fact of life 
cannot be other than healthful, yea, healing 
to the uttermost. 



WEARY SOULS. 49 

Ah ! make me, Father, anything thou wilt, 
So be thou will it, I am safe with thee ; 

. . Make me something, — God; 
Clear, sunny, veritable purity, 
Of high existence ; in thyself content, 
And seeking for no measures. — I have 

reaped 
Earth's harvests, if I find this holy death, — 
Take me when thou wilt. 



O soul, rejoice! 
Thou art God's child indeed, for all thy 

sinning, 
A poor weak child, yet his, and worth the 
winning 
With saviour-eyes and voice. 



The God who is ever uttering himself in 

the changeful profusions of nature; who takes 
4 



50 HELPS FOR 

millions of years to form a soul that shall 
understand him and be blessed ; who never 
needs to be, nor ever is, in haste ; who wel- 
comes the simplest thought of truth or 
beauty as the return for seed he has sown 
upon the old fallows of eternity ; who re- 
joices in the response of a faltering moment 
to the age — long cry of his wisdom in the 
streets ; the God of music, of painting, of 
building ; the Lord of Hosts, the God of 
mountains and oceans, the God of history 
working in time into Christianity ; this God 
is the God of little children, and he aloire 
can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and 
devoted. Our longing desires can no more 
exhaust the fulness of the treasures of the 
Godhead, than our imagination can touch 
their measure ; not a thought, not a joy, not 
a hope of one of his creatures can pass un- 
seen ; and while one of them remains un- 
satisfied he is not Lord over all. 



WEARY SOULS. 51 

"With angels and with archangels, with 
the spirits of the just made perfect, with the 
little children of the kingdom, yea, with the 
Lord himself, and for all them that know 
him not, we praise and magnify his name in 
itself, saying, Our Father. We do not draw 
back, for that we are unworthy, nor even 
for that we are hard-hearted and care not 
for the good. For it is his child-likeness 
that makes him our God and Father. The 
perfection of his relation to us swallows up 
all our imperfection, all our defects, all our 
evils ; for our childhood is born of his 
Fatherhood. That man is perfect in 
faith, who can come to God, in the utter 
dearth of his feelings and his desires, 
without a glow or an aspiration, with the 
weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, 
and wandering forgetfulness, and say to 
him, Thou art my refuge because thou art 
my home. 



52 HELPS FOR 

Such a faith will not lead to presumption. 
The man who can pray such a prayer, will 
know better than another that God is not 
mocked ; that he is not a man that he should 
repent; that tears and entreaties will not 
work on him to the breach of one of his 
laws ; that for God to give a man, because 
he asked for it, that which was not in har- 
mony with his laws of truth and right, 
would be to damn him — to cast him into 
the outer darkness. And he knows that out 
of that prison, the childlike, imperturbable 
God will let no man come till he has paid 
the uttermost farthing. 

And if he should forget this, the God to 
whom he belongs does not forget it, does 
not forget him. Life is no series of chances 
with a few providences sprinkled between 
to keep up a justly failing belief, but one 
providence of God; and the man shall not 
live long before life itself shall remind him, 



WEARY SOULS. 53 

it may be in agony of soul, of that which he 
has forgotten. 

" In everything," says St. Paul, " by 
prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, 
let your requests be made known unto God." 
For this everything, nothing is too small. 
That it should trouble us is enough. There 
is some principle involved in it, w T orth the 
notice even of God himself ; for did he not 
make us so that the thing does trouble us ? 
And surely for this everything nothing can 
be too great. 

And now his eyes were opened to see 
that in his nature and thoughts lay large 
spaces wherein God ruled not supreme — 
desert places, where, who could tell what 
might appear? ... If in very deed 
he lived and moved and had his being: in 
God, then assuredly, there ought not to be 



54 HELPS FOE 

one cranny in his nature, one realm of his 
consciousness, one well-spring of thought, 
where the will of God was a stranger. 



The devotion of God to his creations is 
perfect ; he does not think about himself 
but about them ; he wants nothing for him- 
self, but finds his blessedness in the out-go- 
ing of blessedness. 



God is simply and altogether onr friend — 
our father, — our more than friend, father 
and mother— our infinite love — perfect God. 
Grand and strong beyond all that human- 
imagination can conceive of poet-thinking 
and kingly action ; he is delicate beyond 
all that human tenderness can conceive, 
homely beyond all that human heart can 
conceive of father and mother. He has not 
two thoughts about ns. With him all is sim- 
plicity of purpose, and meaning, and effort, 



WEARY SOULS. 55 

and end, namely, that we should be as he 
is, think the same thoughts, mean the same 
things, possess the same blessedness. It is 
so plain that any one may see it, every one 
ought to see it, every one shall see it. It 
must be so. He is utterly true and good to 
us, nor shall anything withstand his will. 



Everybody knows, what few think about, 
that once there lived a man, who in the 
broad face of prejudiced-respectability, truth- 
hating hypocrisy, commonplace religion, and 
dull book-learning, affirmed that he knew 
the secret of life and understood the heart 
and history of men ; — who wept over their 
sorrows, yet worshipped the God of the 
w T hole earth, saying that he had known him 
from eternal days. The same said that he 
came to do what the Father did, and that 
he did nothing but what he had learned of 
the Father. They killed him in a terrible 



56 HELPS FOR 

way, that one is afraid even to think of. 
But he insisted that he laid down his life, 
— that he allowed them to take it. Now I 
ask, whether that grandest thing crowning 
his life, the yielding it to the hand of vio- 
lence, he had not learned also from his 
Father ? Was his death the only thing he 
had not so learned ? If I am right, then the 
suffering of those three terrible hours was 
a type of the suffering of the Father him- 
self, in bringing sons and daughters through 
the cleansing and glorifying fires, without 
which the created cannot be made the very 
children of God — partakers of the divine 
nature and peace. 



I never do anything of myself, — I do not 
go where I wish, but where I seem to be 
called or sent. I never even wish much ex- 
cept when I pray to him, in whom are hid 
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ; 



WEARY SOULS, 57 

after what He wants to give me, I am wish- 
ing all day long, I used to build many cas- 
tles, not without a beauty of their own ; 
that was when I had less understanding ; 
now I leave them to God to build for me. 



Age is not all decay ; it is the ripening, 
— the swelling of the fresh life within, that 
withers and bursts the husk. 



Surely, there is a living power of right, 
whose justice is the soul of our justice, who 
will have right done, and causes even our 
own souls to take up arms against us when 
we do wrong. 

If I had not the hope of one day being 
good like God himself, if I thought there 
was no escape out of the wrong and bad- 
ness I feel within me, and know I am 
not able to rid myself of without supreme 



58 HELPS FOR 

help, not all the wealth and honors of the 
world could reconcile me to life. 



Why should not a youth — a boy, a child 
— desire with all his might, that his heart 
and mind should be clean, his will strong, 
his thoughts just, his head clear, his soul 
dwelling in the place of life ? Why should 
not he desire that his life should be a com- 
plete thing, and an outgoing of life to his 
neighbor ? 

It is when a man is most of man, that the 
cause of the man — the God of his life — the 
very Life himself, is closest to him, is most 
within him. 

God never gave a man a thing to do 
concerning which it were irreverent to 
ponder how the Son of man would have 
done it. 



WEARY SOULS. 59 

The truth was what Jesus spoke. He 
spoke out of a region of realities which he 
knew could only be suggested — not repre- 
sented, in the forms of intellect and speech. 
With vivid flashes of light and truth his 
words invade our darkness, rousing us with 
sharp stings of light to will our awaking, to 
arise from the dead and cry for the light 
which he can give, — not in the lightning of 
words only, but in indwelling presence and 
power. 

Forgiveness is love toward the unlovely » 
. . . Love is divine, and then most di- 
vine when it loves according to needs, not 
according to merits. . . . God is for- 
giving us every day, — sending from before 
him and us, our sins, and their fogs and 
darkness. Witness the shining of his sun, 
and the falling of his rain ; the Ailing of 
their hearts with food and gladness, that 



60 HELPS FOR 

he loves them that love him not ! When 
some sin that we have committed has 
clouded all our horizon, and hidden him 
from our eyes, he, forgiving us as we are, 
and that we may be forgiven, sweeps away 
a path for this, his forgiveness to reach our 
hearts, that it may, by causing our repent- 
ance, destroy the wrong, and make us able, 
even to forgive ourselves. 



God's love is ever in front of his forgive- 
ness. . . . No man, who will not' for- 
give his neighbor, can believe that God is 
willing, yea, wanting, to forgive him ; can 
believe that the dove of God's peace is hov- 
ering over a chaotic heart, fain to alight, 
but finding no rest for the sole of its foot. 
. . . Every sin meets with its due fate 
— inexorable expulsion from the paradise of 
God's presence. 



WEARY SOULS. 61 

My God, take care of me, 
Pardon and swathe me in an infinite ]ove 
Pervading and inspiring me, thy child, 
And let thy own design in me work on, 
Upholding the ideal man in me, 
Which being greater far than I have grown, 
I cannot comprehend. I am thine, not 

mine, — 
One day, completed into thine intent, 
I shall be able to discourse with thee ; 
For thy idea, gifted with a self, 
Must be of one with the mind whence it 

sprung 
And fit to talk with thee about thy thoughts. 
Lead me, O Father, holding by thy hand ; 
I ask not whither, for it must be on. 



All is God's : 
And my poor life is terribly sublime ; 
Where'er I look, I am alone in God, 
As this round world is wrapt in folding space; 



62 HELPS FOR 

Behind, before, begins and ends in him : 
So all beginnings and all ends are hid ; 
And he is hid in me, and I in him. 



For he had hope in God — the growth of 
years,— 

Ponclerings, and aspirations from a child, 
And prayers and readings and repentances ; 
For something in him had ever sought the 

peace 
Of other something deeper in him still, 
Some sounds sighed ever for a harmony 
With other, fainter tones, that softly drew 
Nearer and nearer from the unknown 

depths, - 
Where the individual goeth out in God. 



It is not the high summer alone that- is 
God's. The winter also is his, . . . and 
all man's winters are his — the winter of 



WEARY SOULS. 63 

our poverty, — the winter of our sorrow, — 
the winter of unhappiness, — even the winter 
of our discontent. 



As a good child born in a family will 
make a family good, so Jesus born into the 
world will make the world good at last. 
And this perfect child born in your hearts, 
will make your hearts good, and that is 
God's best gift to you. 



All the sermon was a persuading of the 
people that God really loves them, without 
any if ov hut. 

Certain I am, that but for the love which, 
ever revealing itself, came out brightest at 
that first Christmas time, there would be 
no feasting, nay, no smiling ; no world to go 
careering in joy about its central fire, or men 
and women upon it, to look up and rejoice. 



64 HELPS FOR 

All the doors that lead inward, to the 
secret place of the Most High, are doors out- 
ward ; out of self, out of smallness, out of 
wrong. 

PEA TEE. 

O thou who holdest the waters in the 
hollow of one hand, and earnest the lambs 
of thine own making in thy bosom with 
the other hand, it would be altogether un- 
worthy of thee and of thy majesty of love, 
to require of us that which thou knowest we 
cannot bring unto thee, until thou dost en- 
rich us with that same : therefore, like 
thine own children, we bow down before 
thee, and pray that thou wouldst take thy 
will of us, thy holy and perfect and blessed 
will of us ; for, O God, we are all thine own. 
. . . And now, for all our wrong doings, 
for all our sins and trespasses of many kinds, 
— do not forget them, O God, till thou hast 



WEARY SOULS. 65 

put them behind thy back where even thine 
own eyes shall never see them again, that 
we may walk bold and upright before thee, 
forevermore ; — and see the face of him 
w T ho was as much God, in doing thy bidding 
(will) as if he had been ordering all things 
himself. For his sake, Amen. 



This is my quarrel with ail those scien- 
tific arguments and similes, and doctrines, 
as they call them — they just hold a poor 
soul at arm's length, out over from God 
himself ; and they raise a mist and a storm 
all about him, so that the poor child cannot 
see the Father himself, standing w T ith his 
arms stretched out as wide as the heavens, 
to take the worn child of earth ; the more 
sinner, the more welcome to his very heart. 
If they would leave all that, and just per- 
suade the people to speak a word or two to 



66 HELPS FOE 

God himself, the loss would be very small, 
and the gain very great. 



Why should not a man be happy when 
he is growing old, so long as his faith 
strengthens the feeble -knees, which chiefly 
suffer in the process of going down the hill ? 
True, the fever heat is over, and the oil 
burns more slowly in the lamp of life ; but 
if there be less fervor there is more pervad- 
ing warmth ; if less of fire, more of sun- 
shine, there is less smoke and more light. 
Verily, youth is good, but old age is better 
— to the man who forsakes not his youth 
when his youth forsakes him ! The sweet 
vi sitings of Nature do not depend upon youth 
or romance, but upon that quiet Spirit whose 
meekness inherits the earth. 



A real duty is a necessity of the human 
nature, without seeing and doing which, a 



WEARY SOULS. 67 

in an can never attain to the truth and bless- 
edness of his own being. 



The whole history of the Christian life is 
a series of resurrections. Every time a man 
bethinks himself that he is not walking in 
the light, that he has been forgetting him- 
self, and must repent ; that he has been 
asleep and must awake ; that he has been 
letting his garments trail, and must gird up 
the loins of his mind ; every time this takes 
place there is a resurrection in the world. 
Yes, every time that a man finds his heart 
is troubled, that he is not rejoicing in God, 
a resurrection must follow ; a resurrec- 
tion out of the night of troubled thoughts* 
into the gladness of the truth. For the 
truth is, and ever was, and ever must be, 
gladness, however much the souls on which 
it shines may be obscured by the clouds of 



68 HELPS FOR 

sorrow, troubled by fears, or shot through 
with the lightnings of pain. 



Troubled soul ! thou art not bound to 
feel, but thou art bound to arise. God loves 
thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou 
canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art 
bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. 
Try not to feel good when thou art not 
good, but cry to him who is good. He 
changes not because thou changest, nay, 
he has an especial tenderness of love toward 
thee, for that thou art in the dark, and hast 
no light ; and his heart is glad when thou 
dost arise and say, " I will go to my Father. 55 
,. . . Will thou his will. Say to him : 
"My God I am very dull and low and hard ; 
but thou art wise and high and tender ; and 
thou art my God. I am thy child. For- 
sake me not." Then, fold the arms of thy 



WEARY SOULS. 69 

faith, wait in quietness until light goes up 
in thy darkness; . . . then bethink 
thee of something that thou oughtest to do, 
and go and do it. It may be but the sweep- 
ing of a room, or the preparing of a meal, 
or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feel- 
ings, do thy work. 



As God lives by his own will, and we live 
in Him, so has he given us power to will in 
ourselves. How much better should we not 
fare if, rinding that we have no feeble in- 
clination to seek the source of our life, we 
should yet will upward toward God, rous- 
ing that essence of life in us, which he has 
given us from his own heart, to call again 
upon him who is our life, who can fill the 
emptiest heart, rouse the deadest conscience, 
quicken the dullest feeling, and strengthen 
the feeblest will. 



70 HELPS FOR 

We must not choose our neighbor; we 
must take the neighbor that God sends us. 
In him, whoever he be, lies hidden or re- 
vealed, a beautiful brother. . . . Thus 
will love spread and spread in wider and 
stronger pulses, till the whole human race 
will be sacredly lovely. . . . But there 
are those whose first impulse is ever to repel 
and not to receive. Learn they may and 
learn they must ; even these may grow in 
grace until a countenance unknown will 
awake in them a yearning of affection, ris- 
ing to pain, because there is for it no ex- 
pression, and they can only give the man to 
God, and be still. 



Father, thou alone art, and I am because 
thou art. Thy will shall be mine. 



The love of our neighbor is the only door 
out of the dungeon of self. . . . The 



WEARY SOULS. 71 

man thinks his consciousness is himself; 
whereas his life consisteth in the inbreathing 
of God, and the consciousness of the universe 
of Truth. To have himself, to know him- 
self, to enjoy himself, he calls life ; whereas 
if he would forget himself, tenfold would 
be his life in himself and his neighbors. The 
region of man's life is a spiritual region. 
God, his friends, his neighbors, his brothers 
all, is the wide world in which alone his spirit 
can find room. Himself is his dungeon. 
. . . His life is not in knowing that he 
lives, but in loving all forms of life. He is 
made for the All ; God, the All, is his life. 



All feelings of beauty and peace and love- 
liness, and right and goodness, we trail with 
us from our home, God is the only home of 
the human soul. ... I get peeps, now 
and then, into the condition of my own 
heart, which for the moment, make it seem 



72 HELPS FOR 

impossible that I should ever rise into a 
true state of nature — that is, into the sim- 
plicity of God's will concerning me. The 
only hope for ourselves and for others lies 
in him, in the power the creating Spirit has 
over the spirits he has made. 



We are saved by hope, never man hoped 
too much, or repented that he had hoped. 
We do not hope in God half enough. The 
very fact that hope is strength and strength 
the outcome of the body of life, shows that 
hope is at one with the very essence of what 
says " I am," yea, of what doubts, and says, 
u Am I? " and therefore is reasonable. 



There is, indeed, a rest that remaineth, a 
rest pictured out even here, to rouse my dull 
heart to desire it, and follow after it, a rest 
that consists in thinking the thoughts of Him 
who is the Peace, because the Unity ; in 



WEARY SOULS. 73 

being fitted with that spirit that now pict- 
ures itself forth in the repose of the heav- 
ens and the earth. 



Is not all the good in us his image ? (the 
image of God). Imperfect and sinful as w T e 
are, is not all the foundation of our being 
his image ? Is not the sin all ours, and the 
life in us all God's? We cannot be the 
creatures of God, without partaking of his 
nature. Every motion of our conscience, 
every admiration of what is pure and noble, 
is a sign and a result of this. Is not every 
self-accusation a proof of the presence of 
his Spirit ? 

If all the labor of God is to bring sons 
into glory, lifting them out of the abyss of 
evil bondage, up to the rock of his pure free- 
dom, the only worthy end of life must be 
to work in the same direction — to be a fel- 



74: HELPS FOE 

low-worker with God. But I was taught 
that the way to help others was not to tell 
them their duty, but myself to learn of him 
who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. 
As I learned of him, I should be able to 
help them. ... I have a burning de- 
sire to help in making the world clean — if 
it be only by sweeping one little room in it. 
I want to lead some poor, stray sheep home 
— home to the bosom of God, where alone 
man is true man. 



No one is good but God. No one holds 
the truth, or can hold it, in one and the same 
thought, but God. 



Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and 
might be a better thing ; but there is an 
education, that of life, which, when seconded 
by a pure will to learn, leaves the schools 



WEARY SOULS. 75 

behind. . . . For life is God's school, 
and they that will listen to the Master there, 
will learn at God's speed. 



Humanity may, like other vital forms, 
diseased systems, fix on this or that as the 
object not merely of its desire, but of its 
need ; it can never be stilled by less than 
the bread of life — the very presence in the 
innermost nature, of the Father and the Son. 



It is not a belief in immortality that will 
deliver a man from the woes of humanity, 
but faith in the God of life, the Father of 
lights, the God of all consolation and com- 
fort. Believing in him a man can leave his 
friends, and their and his own immortality 
with everything else — even his and their 
love and perfection, with utter confidence, 
in his hands. Until we have this life in 
us we shall never be at peace. The living 



76 HELPS FOR 

God dwelling in the heart he has made, and 
glorifying it by inmost speech with himself, 
that is life, assurance, and safety, nothing 
less is or can be such. 



If we do not find God in nature we may 
conclude, either that we do not understand 
the expression of nature, or have mistaken 
ideas or poor feeling about him. 



There is that in us, which is not at home 
in this world, which I believe holds secret 
relation with every star, or perhaps, rather, 
with that in the heart of God, whence is- 
sued every star, — diverse in kind and char- 
acter, as in color, and place, and motion, and 
light. To that in us this world is so far, 
strange, unnatural, and unfitting, and we 
need a yet homelier home. Yea, no home 
at last will do, but the home of God's heart. 



WEARY SOULS. 11 

What unspeakable bliss of heart and soul 
and mind and sense remain for him who, 
like St. Paul, is crucified with Christ, who 
lives no more from his own self, but is in- 
spired and informed and possessed with the 
same faith toward the Father in which Jesus 
lived and wrought the will of the Father ! 
If the words attributed to Jesus are indeed 
the words of him whom Jesus declared 
himself, then truly is the fate of mankind 
a glorious one, because men have a God 
supremely grand, all-perfect in Godhead ; 
for that alone is, and that alone can be, the 
absolute bliss of the created. 



Think, brothers ! think, sisters ! we walk 
in the air of an eternal Fatherhood. Every 
lifting up of the heart is a looking up to the 
Father. Graciousness and truth are around, 
above, beneath, yea, in us. When we are 
least worthy, then, most tempted, hardest, 



78 HELPS FOR 

unkindest, let us yet commend our spirits 
into his hands. "Whither else dare we send 
them ? . . . And shall we dare to think, 
that if we, being evil, know how to give good 
gifts to our children, God will not give 
us his own Spirit, when we come to'ask 
him ? Will not some heavenly dew descend, 
cool upon the hot anger ? some genial rain- 
drop in the dry selfishness, some glance of 
sunlight on the cloudy hopelessness ? 



Nor is there anything we can ask for our- 
selves that we may not ask for another, , 
. . . And there will be moments when, 
filled with that Spirit which is the Lord, 
nothing will ease our hearts of their love 
but the commending of all men, all our 
brothers, all our sisters, to the one Father ; 
nor shall we ever know that repose in the 
Father's hands, till the Fatherhood is fully 
revealed to us in the love of the brethren ; 



WEARY SOULS. 79 

. . . never shall we know him aright 
until we rejoice and exult for our race, that 
he is the Father. 



Hope never hurt any one — never yet in- 
terfered with duty ; nay, always strengthens 
to the performance of duty, gives courage, 
and clears the judgment. St. Paul says, 
" We are saved by hope." 



The sun was below the horizon ; all the 
dazzle was gone out of the gold, and the 
roses were fast fading ; the downy blue of 
the sky was trembling into stars overhead ; 
the brown dusk was gathering in the air ; 
and a wind full of gentleness and peace came 
from the west. He let his thoughts go 
where they would, and they went up into 
the abyss over his head. " Lord, come to 
me," he cried in his heart, " for I cannot go 
to thee. If I were to go up through that 



80 HELPS FOR 

awful space for ages and ages, I should 
never find thee. Yet there thou art. The 
tenderness of thine infinitude looks upon 
me from these heavens. Thou art in them 
and in me. Because thou thinkest, I think. 
I am thine — all thine — I abandon myself to 
thee. Fill me with thyself. When I am 
full of thee, my griefs themselves will grow 
golden in thy sunlight. Thou holdest them 
and their cause, and wilt find some nobler 
atonement between them than vile forget- 
f ulness and the death of love. Lord, let me 
help those that are wretched because they 
do not know thee. Let me tell them that 
thou, the life, must needs suffer for and 
with them, that they may be made partak- 
ers of thy ineffable peace. My life is hid 
in thine, take me in thy hand." 



We ought to cultivate the friendships of 
little things. Beauty is one of the surest 



WEARY SOULS. 81 

antidotes to vexation. Often when life looks 
dreary from some real or fancied injustice, 
or indignity, lias a thought of truth been 
flashed into my mind from a flower, the 
frost, a shadow, clouds, rainbow T s, stars, and 
sunrises ! 

Wherever there is a humble, thoughtful 
nature, into that nature the divine conscious- 
ness — that is, the Spirit of God — presses, 
as into its own place. 



To love our neighbor is a great help to 
that perfect love of God which casteth out 
fear ; — nothing but the love of God will 
make yon love your neighbors aright ; and 
the Spirit of God, which alone gives weight 
for any good, will, by these loves — which 
are life — strengthen you, at last, to believe 
in the light, even in the midst of dark- 
ness. 



82 HELPS FOR 

There is no forgetting of ourselves but in 
the finding of our deeper, our true selves, 
God's idea of us, the Christ in us. Nothing 
but that self can displace the false, greedy, 
whiniug self, of which the most of us are 
so fond and proud. 



The poorest place in which the atmosphere 
is love is more homelike, and of consequence 
more heavenly, than the most beautiful, 
even where law and order are the elements 
supreme. 



Man, apart from God, can generate no 
light. He is not meant to be separated from 
God. And only think, then, what light he 
can give you, if you will turn to him, and 
ask him for it ! 

To know God as the beginning and end, 
the root and cause, the giver, the enabler, the 



WEARY SOULS. 83 

love and joy and perfect good, is life ; and 
faith in its truest, simplest, mightiest form 
is to do his will in the one thing revealing 
itself at the moment, as duty. 



We must, of course, be able to do with- 
out whatever is denied us ; but when the 
heart is hungry for any honest thing, we 
may surely use all honest endeavor to obtain 
that thing. 

The cure of all ills is neither more nor 
less than more life. Life above and beyond 
the life that took the stroke. 



I do not think the road to contentment 
lies in despising what we have not got. Let 
ns acknowledge all good, all delight, that 
the world holds, and be content without it. 
But this w r e can never do but by possessing 
the one thins; — without which I do not 



84 HELPS FOR 

merely say we ought to be content, but no 
one can be content — the Spirit of the 
Father. 

When a man turns to look at himself, 
that moment the glow of the loftiest bliss 
begins to fade. . . . For there the man 
sees himself but in his own dim mirror ; 
whereas, ere he turned to look in that, he 
knew himself in the absolute clarity of 
God's present thought out-bodying him. 



In the working of the divine love upon 
our race, my enemy is doomed to cease to 
be my enemy and to become my friend ; 
. . . from each of us comes forth the 
brother who was inside the enemy all the 
time. In the faith of this let us love our 
enemy now; . . . holding fast our 
brother in defiance of the changeful wiles 
of the wicked enchantment which would 



WEARY SOULS. 85 

persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not 
our brother, but some horrible thing, hate- 
ful and hating. Bat what if we are in the 
wrong, and do the w T rong and hate because 
we have injured ? What then ? Why, then 
let us cry to God, struggle as under the 
weight of a spiritual incubus. 



Will a man ever love his enemies ? He 
may come to do good to them that hate 
him ; but when will he pray for them that 
despitef ully use him and persecute him ? 
When he is the child of his Father in 
heaven. 

It is impossible without love to be just, 
much more cannot justice exist with hate. 
. . . Love is the law of our condition, 
without which we can no more render jus- 
tice than a man can keep a straight line 
walking in the dark. . . . No man who 



86 HELPS FOR 

is even indifferent to his brother can recog- 
nize the claims which his humanity has 
upon him. Indifference itself is an in j ustice. 



Love alone lives and causes all other truth 
to take shape, conscious or unconscious. 
But God lets men have their playthings, 
like the children they are, that they may 
learn to distinguish them from true posses- 
sions. If they are not learning that, he 
takes them from them, and tries the other 
way ; for lack of them and its misery, they 
will perhaps seek the true. 



I will have nothing to hide me from the 
eye of Him who made me. That eye is the 
very life of men, I would not hide a thought 
from Him. The worse it is, the more need 
for him to see it. It would make me miser- 
able to think there was anything in me he 
would not like to look at and see. 



WEARY SOULS. 87 

In every one there is a loneliness, an inner 
chamber of peculiar life, into which God 
only can enter. I say not it is the innermost 
chamber, but a chamber into which no 
brother^ no sister can come. 



By his creation each man is isolated with 
God ; each, in respect to his peculiar mak- 
ing, can say, " My God ; " each can come to 
him alone, and speak with him face to face, 
as a man speaketh with his friend. . . . 
Each of us is a distinct flower or tree in the 
spiritual garden of God, — precious, each for 
his own sake, in the eyes of him, who is 
even now making us, — each of us watered 
and shone upon, and filled with life, for the 
sake of his flower, his completed being, 
which will blossom out of him at last, to the 
glory and pleasure of the great Gardener. 
For each has within him a secret of the Di- 
vinity ; each is growing toward the revela- 



88 HELPS FOR 

tion of that secret to himself, and so to the 
full reception, according to his measure, of 
the divine. Every moment that he is true 
to his true self some fresh channel is opened 
upward for the coming glory of the flower, 
the conscious offering of his whole being in 
beauty, to his Maker. Each man, then, is 
in God's sight, ivorth. Life and action, 
thought and intent, are sacred. And what 
an end lies before us ! 



The blessedness of life is that we can 
hide nothing from God. If w r e could hide 
anything from God, that hidden thing 
would, by and >by, turn into a- terrible dis- 
ease. It is the sight of God that keeps and 
makes things clean. 



A man's life is where the kingdom of 
heaven is — within him. 



WEARY SOULS. 89 

The soul is not capable of generating its 
own requirements, it needs to be supplied 
from a well whose springs lie deeper than 
its own soil, in the Infinite All, namely, 
upon which that soul rests. Happy they 
who have found that those springs have an 
outlet in their hearts — on the hill of prayer. 

When once a man has set out to find God, 
he must find him or die. 



The common transactions of life are the 
most sacred channels for the spread of the 
heavenly leaven. _____ 

People must have troubles, else they 
would grow unendurable for pride and inso- 
lence. 

The love of God is the soul of Christian- 
ity. Christ is the body of that truth. The 



90 HELPS FOR 

love of God is the creating and redeeming, 
the forming and satisfying power of the 
universe. The love of God is that which 
kills evil and glorifies goodness. It is the 
safety of the great whole. It is the home 
atmosphere of all life. 



The business of a man's life is to be a 
Christian. A man has to do with God first ; 
in him only can he find the unity and har- 
mony he seeks. To be one with him is to 
be at the centre of things. 



Inasmuch as man is made in the image 
of God, nothing less than a love in 
the image of God's love, all-embracing, 
quietly excusing, heartily commending, can 
constitute the blessedness of man. . . . 
Where man loves in his kind, even as God 
loves in his kind, then man is saved, then 
he has reached the unseen anS eternal. 



WEARY SOULS. 91 

Life is at work in us, — the sacred Spirit 
of God travailing in us. That Spirit has 
gained one end of his labor when he has 
brought us to beg for the help which he has 
been giving us all the time. 



The best thing we can do — infinitely the 
best, indeed the only thing, that men may 
receive the truth — is to be ourselves true. 
Beyond all doing of good is the being good, 
for he that is good not only does good 
things, but all that ho does is good. 



We are continually grumbling because we 
cannot get the people about us — our ser- 
vants, our tradespeople, or whoever they 
may be — to do just what we tell them. It 
makes half the misery in the w T orld because 
they will have something of their own in it 
against what they are told. But are we not 
always doing the same thing ? and ought we 



92 HELPS FOR 

not to learn something of forgiveness for 
them, and very much from the fact that we 
are just in the same position ? We only 
recognize in part that we are put here, in 
this world, precisely to learn to be obedient. 



God alone can make us clean — put our 
hearts right, — make us simple, God-loving, 
man-loving creatures — as much afraid of 
harboring an unjust thought of our neigh- 
bor, as of stealing that which is his ; as 
much afraid of pride and self-confidence as 
of saying, " There is no God ! " as far from 
distrusting God for the morrow, as from 
committing suicide. . . . The only sal- 
vation is in being filled with the Spirit of 
God, the mind of Christ. 



A living soul may outgrow all stain and 
all reproach. I do not mean in the judg- 
ment of men merely, but in the judgment 



WEARY SOULS. 93 

of God, which is always founded on the act- 
ual fact, and always calls things by their 
right names, and covers no man's sin, al- 
though he 'forgives it and takes it away 
A man may abjure his sin, so, cast it away 
from him, so utterly, with pure heart and 
full intent, that although lie did it, it is his 
no longer. ... It is the kindest thing 
God can do for his children, sometimes, to 
let them fall into the mire. 



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